Alternatives to Bundler logo

Alternatives to Bundler

Metro Bundler, Conduit, npm, Webpack, and Rake are the most popular alternatives and competitors to Bundler.
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What is Bundler and what are its top alternatives?

It provides a consistent environment for Ruby projects by tracking and installing the exact gems and versions that are needed. It is an exit from dependency hell, and ensures that the gems you need are present in development, staging, and production.
Bundler is a tool in the Front End Package Manager category of a tech stack.

Top Alternatives to Bundler

  • Metro Bundler
    Metro Bundler

    🚅 Fast: We aim for sub-second reload cycles, fast startup and quick bundling speeds. ⚖️ Scalable: Works with thousands of modules in a single application. ⚛️ Integrated: Supports every React Native project out of the box. ...

  • Conduit
    Conduit

    Conduit is a lightweight open source service mesh designed for performance, power, and ease of use when running applications on Kubernetes. Conduit is incredibly fast, lightweight, fundamentally secure, and easy to get started with. ...

  • npm
    npm

    npm is the command-line interface to the npm ecosystem. It is battle-tested, surprisingly flexible, and used by hundreds of thousands of JavaScript developers every day. ...

  • Webpack
    Webpack

    A bundler for javascript and friends. Packs many modules into a few bundled assets. Code Splitting allows to load parts for the application on demand. Through "loaders" modules can be CommonJs, AMD, ES6 modules, CSS, Images, JSON, Coffeescript, LESS, ... and your custom stuff. ...

  • Rake
    Rake

    It is a software task management and build automation tool. It allows the user to specify tasks and describe dependencies as well as to group tasks in a namespace. ...

  • Yarn
    Yarn

    Yarn caches every package it downloads so it never needs to again. It also parallelizes operations to maximize resource utilization so install times are faster than ever. ...

  • RequireJS
    RequireJS

    RequireJS loads plain JavaScript files as well as more defined modules. It is optimized for in-browser use, including in a Web Worker, but it can be used in other JavaScript environments, like Rhino and Node. It implements the Asynchronous Module API. Using a modular script loader like RequireJS will improve the speed and quality of your code. ...

  • Browserify
    Browserify

    Browserify lets you require('modules') in the browser by bundling up all of your dependencies. ...

Bundler alternatives & related posts

Metro Bundler logo

Metro Bundler

12
32
0
🚇 The JavaScript bundler for React Native
12
32
+ 1
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PROS OF METRO BUNDLER
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    CONS OF METRO BUNDLER
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      Conduit logo

      Conduit

      8
      18
      0
      Open-source service mesh for Kubernetes
      8
      18
      + 1
      0
      PROS OF CONDUIT
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        CONS OF CONDUIT
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          related Conduit posts

          npm logo

          npm

          131.5K
          78.8K
          1.6K
          The package manager for JavaScript.
          131.5K
          78.8K
          + 1
          1.6K
          PROS OF NPM
          • 647
            Best package management system for javascript
          • 382
            Open-source
          • 327
            Great community
          • 148
            More packages than rubygems, pypi, or packagist
          • 112
            Nice people matter
          • 6
            As fast as yarn but really free of facebook
          • 6
            Audit feature
          • 4
            Good following
          • 1
            Super fast
          • 1
            Stability
          CONS OF NPM
          • 5
            Problems with lockfiles
          • 5
            Bad at package versioning and being deterministic
          • 3
            Node-gyp takes forever
          • 1
            Super slow

          related npm posts

          Simon Reymann
          Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH · | 27 upvotes · 4.7M views

          Our whole Node.js backend stack consists of the following tools:

          • Lerna as a tool for multi package and multi repository management
          • npm as package manager
          • NestJS as Node.js framework
          • TypeScript as programming language
          • ExpressJS as web server
          • Swagger UI for visualizing and interacting with the API’s resources
          • Postman as a tool for API development
          • TypeORM as object relational mapping layer
          • JSON Web Token for access token management

          The main reason we have chosen Node.js over PHP is related to the following artifacts:

          • Made for the web and widely in use: Node.js is a software platform for developing server-side network services. Well-known projects that rely on Node.js include the blogging software Ghost, the project management tool Trello and the operating system WebOS. Node.js requires the JavaScript runtime environment V8, which was specially developed by Google for the popular Chrome browser. This guarantees a very resource-saving architecture, which qualifies Node.js especially for the operation of a web server. Ryan Dahl, the developer of Node.js, released the first stable version on May 27, 2009. He developed Node.js out of dissatisfaction with the possibilities that JavaScript offered at the time. The basic functionality of Node.js has been mapped with JavaScript since the first version, which can be expanded with a large number of different modules. The current package managers (npm or Yarn) for Node.js know more than 1,000,000 of these modules.
          • Fast server-side solutions: Node.js adopts the JavaScript "event-loop" to create non-blocking I/O applications that conveniently serve simultaneous events. With the standard available asynchronous processing within JavaScript/TypeScript, highly scalable, server-side solutions can be realized. The efficient use of the CPU and the RAM is maximized and more simultaneous requests can be processed than with conventional multi-thread servers.
          • A language along the entire stack: Widely used frameworks such as React or AngularJS or Vue.js, which we prefer, are written in JavaScript/TypeScript. If Node.js is now used on the server side, you can use all the advantages of a uniform script language throughout the entire application development. The same language in the back- and frontend simplifies the maintenance of the application and also the coordination within the development team.
          • Flexibility: Node.js sets very few strict dependencies, rules and guidelines and thus grants a high degree of flexibility in application development. There are no strict conventions so that the appropriate architecture, design structures, modules and features can be freely selected for the development.
          See more
          Johnny Bell

          So when starting a new project you generally have your go to tools to get your site up and running locally, and some scripts to build out a production version of your site. Create React App is great for that, however for my projects I feel as though there is to much bloat in Create React App and if I use it, then I'm tied to React, which I love but if I want to switch it up to Vue or something I want that flexibility.

          So to start everything up and running I clone my personal Webpack boilerplate - This is still in Webpack 3, and does need some updating but gets the job done for now. So given the name of the repo you may have guessed that yes I am using Webpack as my bundler I use Webpack because it is so powerful, and even though it has a steep learning curve once you get it, its amazing.

          The next thing I do is make sure my machine has Node.js configured and the right version installed then run Yarn. I decided to use Yarn because when I was building out this project npm had some shortcomings such as no .lock file. I could probably move from Yarn to npm but I don't really see any point really.

          I use Babel to transpile all of my #ES6 to #ES5 so the browser can read it, I love Babel and to be honest haven't looked up any other transpilers because Babel is amazing.

          Finally when developing I have Prettier setup to make sure all my code is clean and uniform across all my JS files, and ESLint to make sure I catch any errors or code that could be optimized.

          I'm really happy with this stack for my local env setup, and I'll probably stick with it for a while.

          See more
          Webpack logo

          Webpack

          43.5K
          27K
          752
          A bundler for javascript and friends
          43.5K
          27K
          + 1
          752
          PROS OF WEBPACK
          • 309
            Most powerful bundler
          • 182
            Built-in dev server with livereload
          • 142
            Can handle all types of assets
          • 87
            Easy configuration
          • 22
            Laravel-mix
          • 4
            Overengineered, Underdeveloped
          • 2
            Makes it easy to bundle static assets
          • 2
            Webpack-Encore
          • 1
            Redundant
          • 1
            Better support in Browser Dev-Tools
          CONS OF WEBPACK
          • 15
            Hard to configure
          • 5
            No clear direction
          • 2
            Spaghetti-Code out of the box
          • 2
            SystemJS integration is quite lackluster
          • 2
            Loader architecture is quite a mess (unreliable/buggy)
          • 2
            Fire and Forget mentality of Core-Developers

          related Webpack posts

          Jonathan Pugh
          Software Engineer / Project Manager / Technical Architect · | 25 upvotes · 2.9M views

          I needed to choose a full stack of tools for cross platform mobile application design & development. After much research and trying different tools, these are what I came up with that work for me today:

          For the client coding I chose Framework7 because of its performance, easy learning curve, and very well designed, beautiful UI widgets. I think it's perfect for solo development or small teams. I didn't like React Native. It felt heavy to me and rigid. Framework7 allows the use of #CSS3, which I think is the best technology to come out of the #WWW movement. No other tech has been able to allow designers and developers to develop such flexible, high performance, customisable user interface elements that are highly responsive and hardware accelerated before. Now #CSS3 includes variables and flexboxes it is truly a powerful language and there is no longer a need for preprocessors such as #SCSS / #Sass / #less. React Native contains a very limited interpretation of #CSS3 which I found very frustrating after using #CSS3 for some years already and knowing its powerful features. The other very nice feature of Framework7 is that you can even build for the browser if you want your app to be available for desktop web browsers. The latest release also includes the ability to build for #Electron so you can have MacOS, Windows and Linux desktop apps. This is not possible with React Native yet.

          Framework7 runs on top of Apache Cordova. Cordova and webviews have been slated as being slow in the past. Having a game developer background I found the tweeks to make it run as smooth as silk. One of those tweeks is to use WKWebView. Another important one was using srcset on images.

          I use #Template7 for the for the templating system which is a no-nonsense mobile-centric #HandleBars style extensible templating system. It's easy to write custom helpers for, is fast and has a small footprint. I'm not forced into a new paradigm or learning some new syntax. It operates with standard JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS 3. It's written by the developer of Framework7 and so dovetails with it as expected.

          I configured TypeScript to work with the latest version of Framework7. I consider TypeScript to be one of the best creations to come out of Microsoft in some time. They must have an amazing team working on it. It's very powerful and flexible. It helps you catch a lot of bugs and also provides code completion in supporting IDEs. So for my IDE I use Visual Studio Code which is a blazingly fast and silky smooth editor that integrates seamlessly with TypeScript for the ultimate type checking setup (both products are produced by Microsoft).

          I use Webpack and Babel to compile the JavaScript. TypeScript can compile to JavaScript directly but Babel offers a few more options and polyfills so you can use the latest (and even prerelease) JavaScript features today and compile to be backwards compatible with virtually any browser. My favorite recent addition is "optional chaining" which greatly simplifies and increases readability of a number of sections of my code dealing with getting and setting data in nested objects.

          I use some Ruby scripts to process images with ImageMagick and pngquant to optimise for size and even auto insert responsive image code into the HTML5. Ruby is the ultimate cross platform scripting language. Even as your scripts become large, Ruby allows you to refactor your code easily and make it Object Oriented if necessary. I find it the quickest and easiest way to maintain certain aspects of my build process.

          For the user interface design and prototyping I use Figma. Figma has an almost identical user interface to #Sketch but has the added advantage of being cross platform (MacOS and Windows). Its real-time collaboration features are outstanding and I use them a often as I work mostly on remote projects. Clients can collaborate in real-time and see changes I make as I make them. The clickable prototyping features in Figma are also very well designed and mean I can send clickable prototypes to clients to try user interface updates as they are made and get immediate feedback. I'm currently also evaluating the latest version of #AdobeXD as an alternative to Figma as it has the very cool auto-animate feature. It doesn't have real-time collaboration yet, but I heard it is proposed for 2019.

          For the UI icons I use Font Awesome Pro. They have the largest selection and best looking icons you can find on the internet with several variations in styles so you can find most of the icons you want for standard projects.

          For the backend I was using the #GraphCool Framework. As I later found out, #GraphQL still has some way to go in order to provide the full power of a mature graph query language so later in my project I ripped out #GraphCool and replaced it with CouchDB and Pouchdb. Primarily so I could provide good offline app support. CouchDB with Pouchdb is very flexible and efficient combination and overcomes some of the restrictions I found in #GraphQL and hence #GraphCool also. The most impressive and important feature of CouchDB is its replication. You can configure it in various ways for backups, fault tolerance, caching or conditional merging of databases. CouchDB and Pouchdb even supports storing, retrieving and serving binary or image data or other mime types. This removes a level of complexity usually present in database implementations where binary or image data is usually referenced through an #HTML5 link. With CouchDB and Pouchdb apps can operate offline and sync later, very efficiently, when the network connection is good.

          I use PhoneGap when testing the app. It auto-reloads your app when its code is changed and you can also install it on Android phones to preview your app instantly. iOS is a bit more tricky cause of Apple's policies so it's not available on the App Store, but you can build it and install it yourself to your device.

          So that's my latest mobile stack. What tools do you use? Have you tried these ones?

          See more
          Simon Reymann
          Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH · | 23 upvotes · 4.7M views

          Our whole Vue.js frontend stack (incl. SSR) consists of the following tools:

          • Nuxt.js consisting of Vue CLI, Vue Router, vuex, Webpack and Sass (Bundler for HTML5, CSS 3), Babel (Transpiler for JavaScript),
          • Vue Styleguidist as our style guide and pool of developed Vue.js components
          • Vuetify as Material Component Framework (for fast app development)
          • TypeScript as programming language
          • Apollo / GraphQL (incl. GraphiQL) for data access layer (https://apollo.vuejs.org/)
          • ESLint, TSLint and Prettier for coding style and code analyzes
          • Jest as testing framework
          • Google Fonts and Font Awesome for typography and icon toolkit
          • NativeScript-Vue for mobile development

          The main reason we have chosen Vue.js over React and AngularJS is related to the following artifacts:

          • Empowered HTML. Vue.js has many similar approaches with Angular. This helps to optimize HTML blocks handling with the use of different components.
          • Detailed documentation. Vue.js has very good documentation which can fasten learning curve for developers.
          • Adaptability. It provides a rapid switching period from other frameworks. It has similarities with Angular and React in terms of design and architecture.
          • Awesome integration. Vue.js can be used for both building single-page applications and more difficult web interfaces of apps. Smaller interactive parts can be easily integrated into the existing infrastructure with no negative effect on the entire system.
          • Large scaling. Vue.js can help to develop pretty large reusable templates.
          • Tiny size. Vue.js weights around 20KB keeping its speed and flexibility. It allows reaching much better performance in comparison to other frameworks.
          See more
          Rake logo

          Rake

          56
          36
          0
          A software task management and build automation tool
          56
          36
          + 1
          0
          PROS OF RAKE
            Be the first to leave a pro
            CONS OF RAKE
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              related Rake posts

              Yarn logo

              Yarn

              27.3K
              13.1K
              151
              A new package manager for JavaScript
              27.3K
              13.1K
              + 1
              151
              PROS OF YARN
              • 85
                Incredibly fast
              • 22
                Easy to use
              • 13
                Open Source
              • 11
                Can install any npm package
              • 8
                Works where npm fails
              • 7
                Workspaces
              • 3
                Incomplete to run tasks
              • 2
                Fast
              CONS OF YARN
              • 16
                Facebook
              • 7
                Sends data to facebook
              • 4
                Should be installed separately
              • 3
                Cannot publish to registry other than npm

              related Yarn posts

              Simon Reymann
              Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH · | 27 upvotes · 4.7M views

              Our whole Node.js backend stack consists of the following tools:

              • Lerna as a tool for multi package and multi repository management
              • npm as package manager
              • NestJS as Node.js framework
              • TypeScript as programming language
              • ExpressJS as web server
              • Swagger UI for visualizing and interacting with the API’s resources
              • Postman as a tool for API development
              • TypeORM as object relational mapping layer
              • JSON Web Token for access token management

              The main reason we have chosen Node.js over PHP is related to the following artifacts:

              • Made for the web and widely in use: Node.js is a software platform for developing server-side network services. Well-known projects that rely on Node.js include the blogging software Ghost, the project management tool Trello and the operating system WebOS. Node.js requires the JavaScript runtime environment V8, which was specially developed by Google for the popular Chrome browser. This guarantees a very resource-saving architecture, which qualifies Node.js especially for the operation of a web server. Ryan Dahl, the developer of Node.js, released the first stable version on May 27, 2009. He developed Node.js out of dissatisfaction with the possibilities that JavaScript offered at the time. The basic functionality of Node.js has been mapped with JavaScript since the first version, which can be expanded with a large number of different modules. The current package managers (npm or Yarn) for Node.js know more than 1,000,000 of these modules.
              • Fast server-side solutions: Node.js adopts the JavaScript "event-loop" to create non-blocking I/O applications that conveniently serve simultaneous events. With the standard available asynchronous processing within JavaScript/TypeScript, highly scalable, server-side solutions can be realized. The efficient use of the CPU and the RAM is maximized and more simultaneous requests can be processed than with conventional multi-thread servers.
              • A language along the entire stack: Widely used frameworks such as React or AngularJS or Vue.js, which we prefer, are written in JavaScript/TypeScript. If Node.js is now used on the server side, you can use all the advantages of a uniform script language throughout the entire application development. The same language in the back- and frontend simplifies the maintenance of the application and also the coordination within the development team.
              • Flexibility: Node.js sets very few strict dependencies, rules and guidelines and thus grants a high degree of flexibility in application development. There are no strict conventions so that the appropriate architecture, design structures, modules and features can be freely selected for the development.
              See more
              Johnny Bell

              So when starting a new project you generally have your go to tools to get your site up and running locally, and some scripts to build out a production version of your site. Create React App is great for that, however for my projects I feel as though there is to much bloat in Create React App and if I use it, then I'm tied to React, which I love but if I want to switch it up to Vue or something I want that flexibility.

              So to start everything up and running I clone my personal Webpack boilerplate - This is still in Webpack 3, and does need some updating but gets the job done for now. So given the name of the repo you may have guessed that yes I am using Webpack as my bundler I use Webpack because it is so powerful, and even though it has a steep learning curve once you get it, its amazing.

              The next thing I do is make sure my machine has Node.js configured and the right version installed then run Yarn. I decided to use Yarn because when I was building out this project npm had some shortcomings such as no .lock file. I could probably move from Yarn to npm but I don't really see any point really.

              I use Babel to transpile all of my #ES6 to #ES5 so the browser can read it, I love Babel and to be honest haven't looked up any other transpilers because Babel is amazing.

              Finally when developing I have Prettier setup to make sure all my code is clean and uniform across all my JS files, and ESLint to make sure I catch any errors or code that could be optimized.

              I'm really happy with this stack for my local env setup, and I'll probably stick with it for a while.

              See more
              RequireJS logo

              RequireJS

              9K
              3.2K
              307
              JavaScript file and module loader
              9K
              3.2K
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              PROS OF REQUIREJS
              • 79
                Open source
              • 69
                Modular script loader
              • 66
                Asynchronous
              • 49
                Great for AMD
              • 30
                Fast
              • 14
                Free
              CONS OF REQUIREJS
                Be the first to leave a con

                related RequireJS posts

                Browserify logo

                Browserify

                2.2K
                414
                261
                Browser-side require() the node.js way
                2.2K
                414
                + 1
                261
                PROS OF BROWSERIFY
                • 75
                  Node style browser code
                • 52
                  Load modules installed by npm
                • 45
                  Works great with gulp.js
                • 38
                  NPM modules in the brower
                • 34
                  Open source
                • 16
                  Node streams
                • 1
                  Easy setup
                CONS OF BROWSERIFY
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                  related Browserify posts

                  Yunus ÖZCAN

                  Appitr Run JavaScript ES6 with React Native in the browser built on Monaco Editor, Browserify Webpack Sequelize npm Node.js ExpressJS Babel Flow Type ESLint MobX GraphQL

                  See more